For One More Day
by heart-of-caramel
Summary: After Annabeth's sudden death after the Giant War, everyone is left shocked, Percy most of all. Plunged into a life of grief and loneliness, all he wanted was one more day...Post-HoO, Percy/Annabeth.


**Finally got a proper chance to pour out all my Mark of Athena feels into a proper oneshot.**

**Forgive me for the moment about the horrible flow and the many mistakes.**

**So.**

* * *

**For One More Day**

* * *

_What we wouldn't do_

_For one more day_

* * *

[Picture this.]

A young lady is driving home to dinner. She looks to be in her early twenties. A silver ring gleams on her finger. She is laughing into her cell phone, and hangs up with a "Wait till I get home, I'll kick your sorry butt. You'll regret it _then,_ Kelp Head."

She still smiles as she drives, blowing at an irritating curl of blonde hair which keeps falling over her right eye. She decides to pick up her fiancé's favourite donuts as a special surprise for dinner.

She is looking around for space to park even as the glass bottle of beer smashes her windshield into a spray of flying glass. The car veers into the concrete divider. Her body is tossed like a doll, slamming against the door and the window and the dashboard, until she loses touch with the sights and sounds of the evening.

She does not hear the screeching of cars behind her. She does not hear the honking of horns. She does not hear the retreat of rubber-soled sneakers, running down an alley and off into the night.

* * *

When Percy hears of the accident on the street, and rumours that the blonde girl was his fiancé, the first thing he does is laugh, because _Come on, dude. We're talking about my girl here. She's tougher than tough. There isn't any way that-_

_How are you related to the deceased? _The voice is blank and ruthless. _This was the last call made on her phone._

_What? No. No!_

"I'm sorry, sir," says the voice on the other line. "We found her here two seconds ago, the car's pretty banged up, and-and the girl, sir, she's-"

_Click._

* * *

The hospital is white and clean and full of crying people and important doctors and nurses with smiling faces that smile at him because they cannot see the wasteland inside.

He is the last to arrive.

"Where _were_ you?" people would ask him later. He will not reply. He had been swimming laps in the pool. Drowning in something vaguely like grief. Tears mingling with the chlorinated water.

One look at everybody there and Percy wants to melt into a puddle on the floor.

"Is it true?" he asks. His voice is hollow, lifeless. He is trembling. _"Is it true?"_

Hazel steps forward and lays her hand on his arm. "Percy..." She bursts into tears and he holds her.

A sobbing Piper and a shell-shocked Leo and a trembling Frank and pale-faced Jason and a glassy-eyed Nico surround him and offer small words of comfort that are completely useless to his frozen being. Piper still howls like a toddler, and he hugs her tight even after she's done crying, because at this point he just needs someone to hold onto.

And as he's crushing her limbs, no doubt, and avoiding everyone's gaze, he manages, by sheer will, to force his tears back into their ducts.

* * *

Her body is cold and scarred and bruised. There is dried blood in her hair and her skin is translucent and whiter than the marble floors. And cold. So cold.

She is beautiful.

* * *

He'd thought they were untouchable.

They'd held up the sky for each other, and saved each other countless times, and watched the other face terrifying trials, and fallen into Tartarus hand in hand.

Funny something as meagre as a car crash (to a demigod, at least) would separate them in the end.

* * *

Nightmares fill his mind. Haunting him every night.

_Why didn't you save me, Percy? Why? You could've. You didn't. You said you loved me..._

_I couldn't have saved you, Annabeth. It..I-_

_How could you, Percy? _

_I'm sorry. I'm so sorry...I'd give anything, anything in the world, for you to be back here, with me...just for one more day..._

And then he wakes up crying and sweating and all he wants is to make. It. Stop.

Now.

_Why didn't you SAVE me, Percy?_

* * *

He burns her shroud.

The day turns out to be grey and rainy, exactly like he's feeling. He

They all stand in attention as silver-grey smoke shimmers into the sky. It's the same color of her eyes. Everybody thinks it. Nobody says it.

People are crying. Romans clutch Greeks and Greeks clutch Romans and the world comes to a standstill as fire burns away. Percy spots Rachel shaking like a leaf, and Thalia's gaze is firmly fixed on a crack in a tile on the floor,

All eyes, however, are fixed on Percy, and he knows it. He does not move. He does not cry. He does not even breathe.

When asked for a final word, he says, "I loved her."

(Which brings on another wave of tears.)

* * *

Two months later, and Percy has never felt so lost.

It is like someone has yanked out the floor from underneath him, leaving him dangling in space like a human chandelier.

He is snapping in half.

Every single time he walks the street, he sees a happy couple and _snap_. Another piece of his heart falls out.

People look at him with sympathy. _Oh, this is the man whose wife was killed in that crash. Such a terrible thing._

He turns from them. He turns from them all. It is not the proper thing to do, but then again he does not really know what he is doing anymore.

When he goes to camp, he wanders the beach alone at night. The entire valley is plunged in silence: none of the usual sounds of song and laughter. And the silence is welcoming. It stretches its cold arms out to Percy and he walks into them, curling up in the cold embrace.

He leans against a rock and stares at the moon. The waves struggle to reach his toes and the sea makes soothing sounds, calming the turmoil in his head, but only slightly, very slightly, because what he really wants is now beyond his reach.

"Percy."

He turns. Piper is standing, pillar-like, behind him, tears dripping down her cheeks. There is an uneaten bagel in her hand. She sinks down into the sand, next to him. "I'm so sorry," she whispers, again and again, even though it's not her fault. She, of all of the seven, other than him, was affected the most by Annabeth's death.

He says the pointless, empty words _It's okay, _and they both just sit there until she kisses his cheek, tells him to go back to his cabin and sleep, and walks away, still sniffling.

Percy sighs. He does not want to go back to his cabin and sleep. He does not want to move.

Ever.

He closes his eyes.

* * *

When they open, he's in another world, full of light and laughter. He squints, making out empty shelves. Thousands of them.

"Okay, guys..."

He hears the voice. His hearts freezes, then beats so fast he must be vibrating. With movements that are most likely not being controlled by him, he moves forward, towards what he perceives as a crowd of children, maybe just above ten years old.

"Oooh!" one squeals. "But, miss 'Beth, miss 'Beth, there's gotta be, like, a million boxes up there."

"A thousand and fifty, to be exact," says another voice dryly; the first voice. "You think we can do it?"

A chorus of "Yeah!", pattering of tiny feet on the marble floor, and then he's looking into those grey eyes which will always_, always_ be the death of him.

She approaches him. His stomach flips over, then back again. Her face breaks out into a smile, a wonderful welcoming smile, and a bit of curly blonde hair falls over her right eye, and his heart nearly bursts right there.

His lips take a moment to part, and the sound from the back of his throat takes a moment to rise, but they come together to enable him to say one word which sums it all up.

"No..."

She stops two inches in front of him, and he can feel her warm breath blast against his neck, and _oh, oh _she looks so beautiful and happy and _alive_, and this is _not possible._

"Percy," Annabeth smiles. "Great. We could use a hand."

* * *

What do you do when you meet a lost one?

Well, Percy couldn't do much more that stare. And stare. And stare, because _no. This is not happening. It is all a dream._

"It's not you," he says. He drops to his knees.

She smiles at him, pity in her glance. "It is me." She lowers herself in front of him.

"It's not you, it's not you, it's _not you_," he says, and, dropping his head on her shoulder, he begins to cry, openly, for the first time since her death. He feels vulnerable and weak, like he's been dipped in the Tiber again, but oddly liberated and comforted by his tears, and he stares at her shoes and shuts his eyes so tight it hurts, and the tears drip down like little waterfalls.

She kisses his head. "Percy. It's me, okay?"

He looks up at her. His vision is still blurry, but he can see her well enough to know that she is real and solid and in front of him and that he is probably dreaming, but it is a good dream. She is healthy and glowing and smiling at him with that smile she uses just for him, and it is all just like before. She is perfect. He is perfect. They are perfect.

Annabeth smiles softly and her palm reaches upwards to brush the hair out of his eyes. He nearly loses it again.

"Annabeth..." he gasps. "You...you were lying there...on the hospital bed. So still, and-and you...you were..."

"I was what?" she asks. Her eyes never leave his.

She offers him a hand. Percy grasps it quickly, instinctively, as if grabbing wildly at a falling object. Their fingers meet and he has never felt such a strong sensation in so long, as if there is another layer of flesh forming over his own skin, soft and warm and comforting and almost ticklish.

"Broken." He is whispering. "You were broken."

Annabeth smiles and wipes her own tears from her eyes.

"Things can be fixed," she says.

* * *

People say they 'find' love, like it is an object hidden under a rock. But love takes many forms, and it is never the same for two people. Percy found a certain love with Annabeth, a playful love, a quiet love, but deep and meaningful all the same. An irreplaceable love.

Once she'd gone, he'd let the days go stale. He woke up because he had to. The world seemed grey. He put his heart to sleep.

And now, here she is, back with him again, same as the day he'd proposed.

She hands him a box of books. "Walk with me."

Somewhere in the near distance the children begin to sing, _"One thousand boxes of books on the wall, one thousand boxes of books. Take one down and pass it around...Nine-ninety-nine boxes of books on the wall..."_

Annabeth smiles as she hefts up a box of books in her arms. She leads him behind shelf after shelf and the voices fade and fade until they are barely audible.

"Who are they?" he asks.

She looks back down the hall. "The children, you mean? All half-bloods, who never managed to make it to camp. Hades sent them here after I arrived. Said they needed 'work experience.'" She snorts.

"That-that's so sad."

She shrugs. "Well, yeah. Some make it, some don't. I guess it was never meant to be."

He stands behind her, staring into space, until her eyes narrow and the ends of her lips creep up mischievously.

"Percy." She lets out something similar to a giggle. "Have you forgotten how I look so quick?"

He gulps. "I'll never forget that."

She touches his face lightly and he closes his eyes and warmth spreads through his body, radiating from the spot. She motions to the shelves, smiling.

"Let's get started."

* * *

Percy is so paralyzed he cannot even hand her the darn books, so in the end she pushes him into a chair and begins arranging them herself.

Percy can't stop gazing at her, and apparently he's not very good at hiding it, either.

Finally he says, "Why are you here?"

She looks around, a huge dictionary in her arms. "What?"

"Why are you here?" he repeats. "I mean, this makes no sense at all, and…and I'm not even sure this is real. I mean, I'm glad and all, but-"

Annabeth turns away, puts the dictionary on the shelf. "Percy, come on."

_Eight-seventy-five boxes of books on the wall, eight-seventy five boxes of books…_

"What?" he protests. Swings his legs around for a bit, decides he can use them. Percy gets up and starts piling up books on a lonely shelf.

Annabeth tuts at him. She does it properly.

He looks at her. "I miss this."

She laughs. "I do, too."

"No, really. I mean, I miss us. Gods, doing everything alone every single damn day…no amazing coffee waiting for me when I wake up…"

"I was good at making coffee."

"You were." He regards her. "I mean, I was a wreck. Still am, once I wake up and figure out that this is all a dream. And you…you look so calm. You were the ultimate survivor. How can you be okay with this?"

Annabeth sets down a book and puts her hands on it, fingers drumming random tunes. "What do you want me to say? You're angry with me."

"No," he says.

Her eyes flash.

"Okay. Yes."

"I didn't want to die, Percy, if that's what you mean." She looks at him disapprovingly. "You know my life. If I'd had my way, we'd be locked up in paradise forever and ever. Untouchable."

He laughs. "Fun."

"But I guess…my time had come. And Death can't be reversed, unless you want to go and open the Doors again."

"No," he sighs. "Zeus'll have my case."

* * *

"So," Annabeth says, picking up more books and blowing the dust off them, "whaddaya wanna talk about?"

Talk? Percy would have been content to just be there, next to her, as she unconsciously blew dust into his neck, for all eternity.

"I dunno," he murmurs.

_Seven-twelve boxes of books on the wall, seven-twelve boxes of books…_

"Fine." Annabeth heaves another box from the floor and starts on that one.

He watches her for a while.

_Six-ninety seven boxes of books on the wall, six-ninety seven boxes of books…_

"I love you," he suddenly says into the silence. Annabeth stares.

She gazes at him so long and so furtively it just ends up making him feel uncomfortable. Percy squirms. "What?"

"Oh, sorry." She seems to be coming out from some kind of trance. "I love you too."

She drops a book back into the box and touches his cheek. He holds her hand.

"I never stopped loving you," he says.

She smiles. "I know you didn't."

"How?"

"I felt it," she says vaguely.

He lifts an eyebrow and knows she knows what he's asking. Even here?

"Even here," she says. "Its…well. Pretty damn strong."

He laughs. Pulls her close. "I'd sue a certain Goddess of Love if it wasn't."

Annabeth laughs.

_Six-thirty five boxes of books on the wall, six-thirty five boxes of books…_

* * *

"Do you like it here?"

_Five-forty one boxes of books on the wall, five forty one boxes of books…_

Annabeth looks around. Shoves her hands in her pockets. "Yeah, Percy. I do. I really, really do."

* * *

"How's Sally?" she asks, as Percy carries another carton of books in.

He hands her one. "She's okay. Kind of like me, devastated."

She grimaces. "Another load for the guilt truck. Tell her I'm sorry. And I miss her. And Dad, too."

"Don't worry about your Dad. I call him every week."

Annabeth looks somewhat amused. "What about?"

"Eh. We mostly cry."

_Four-sixty six boxes of books on the wall, four-sixty six boxes of books…_

* * *

"You didn't even say goodbye."

The shelves are almost full.

She lowers her gaze. "I know. I'm sorry, but-"

"No," he says. "I'm not blaming you or anything…I know it was way beyond your control. It's just a fact. You didn't even say goodbye."

Silence_. Three-oh-eight boxes of books on the wall, three-oh-eight boxes of books…_

"You _couldn't_ even say goodbye," he amends.

Annabeth's eyes sparkle. "Guess that's why we're here now, huh?"

* * *

"You know," she says, "I'd always imagined us growing old together. I'd be think and wrinkled, and I'd still be making blue burgers for my fat, balding husband…"

"Balding. Really."

_Two-eight-six boxes of books on the wall…_

She runs her hands through his hair. "Yup. At least it won't be messy, then."

"My mom would like that."

"I think we all would."

* * *

"Piper's a wreck. So is Chiron."

_One hundred boxes of books…_

"Oh."

* * *

_Eighty-nine boxes of books on the wall, eighty nine boxes of books…_

He clambers onto the counter and catches more moth-eaten books on gods-knows-what that Annabeth is throwing at him. He catches less than half.

"You should make a career out of this," she says, but she is laughing.

* * *

"Hey, you know what?"

"No."

"You never do," she replies. "So, a bride, just before she's going to get married, she looks into the mirror and thinks about everything. About how, in the next minutes, her life is going to change. It's a wonderful moment, standing on the precipice of change. Right there, and your life could tilt either way."

Percy looks at her. Her eyes are shining and her face is flushed. She really does get a kick out of these things.

_Take one down, pass it around, sixty-two boxes of books on the wall…_

"Where do you even get this stuff?" he asks her, and she hits him with the Holy Bible.

* * *

_Thirty-seven boxes of books on the wall…_

"Hey, we're almost done."

Her smile is tinged with a strange sadness. "I know."

* * *

_Thirteen boxes of books on the wall, thirteen boxes of books…_

Percy hauls the seven emptied boxes away and joins Annabeth in the cheering.

Their handiwork lies before them: thirteen shelves and what seems like a million books on them. The grim place seems to have found a new light. Annabeth smiles at him. He pulls her into a kiss before she starts talking about each volume on the ledge.

* * *

_Nine boxes of books on the wall…_

Annabeth is crying.

_Take one down, pass it around, eight boxes of books on the wall…_

She is whispering, "I love you. I love you."

_Seven boxes of books on the wall, seven boxes of books…_

"I love you too," he says, holding her tighter.

_Six boxes of books…_

He closes his eyes and Annabeth clings to him like some kind of crazed cat. It hurts but he's never felt better.

_Five boxes of books on the wall…_

"Find a pretty girl," she is saying. "One who'll take care of you and give you all the love you deserve, and more…"

_Four boxes of books…_

"Not unless she's you," he says.

_Three boxes of books on the wall, three boxes of books…_

Annabeth's hair smells like lemons. And vanilla.

_Two boxes of books…_

"Together," Annabeth whispers.

_One box of books…_

She is pulling away from him, he resists: he needs her in his arms. Forever and always.

_Zero boxes of books…_

Silence. The calm before the storm. The deep breath before the plunge. That serene calm before all hell breaks loose.

Annabeth pulls away.

"I don't want to go on," he tells her. "I want to stay here."

And then the moment is over and he just catches the final smile on her teary face as she flings herself back into his arms and then the world fades away.

* * *

In some kind of weird subconscious mind, he can hear the children screaming, "We're done! We're done!"

Percy holds out his arms to them, but the voices are getting fainter…as if he's moving away. Or they're moving away.

He tries to thrash, break free of the invisible bonds that are chaining him down, but suddenly all the strength is leaching from his body and he falls, a senseless heap, to the floor.

* * *

And then his eyes blink open. Bright white and yellow light is streaming down on his face and it's probably midday and the skin on his nose is peeling the sea is lapping up green waves over his ankles and the rock he's leaning against is very very hard and there's a crab poking at his toenail.

As Percy blinks the sun away, he notices that his arms still hold Annabeth's shape, but she is gone, and so is everything else.

* * *

_And I would save every day_

_Till eternity passes away_

_Just to spend them_

_With you_

* * *

**Review? :)**

**~hoc**


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